this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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Only legislation will fix this.
You were never going to shop your way out of it.
I'm all for legislation to fix scummy practices in areas where something is essential, i.e. transport, connectivity, food, etc. Or to counter predatory practices like gambling or lootboxes that prey on addicts or children. But in this case I feel like it'd be a bit too much. Nobody needs WoW, nor is it really (in my opinion) preying on addicts in the same way as gambling or lootboxes. If enough people are willing to pay such a ridiculous amount of money, then apparently this is really the value.
'Exploiting people over nothing important is better, actually' is a weird take.
'If it sells it can't be wrong' is just fucking awful.
holy shit legislating video game prices?
Business model. Legislating the fucking business model.
Jesus fuck, what is it about this industry that makes people flip out about any sort of consumer protection? You know this is fucked up. You know "just don't buy it!" will never help. What other possible solution do you imagine, besides telling companies to just sell a product, without any exorbitant double-dipping?
I don't see the issue to be honest. It's three days... How is it substantially different from somebody waiting 3 months for the price to go down even more? What are you protecting against?
WoW has historically worked on a daily limit to progression model for the endgame, so the 3 day early access is potentially a 3 day permanent boost for the people who buy it. I would imagine competitive raiders going for world first and "clearing hard difficulty versions of raids while they're current content" achievements and their related rewards will be essentially mandated to buy it.
As for gamers obsessing over things at launch, I wish it were different, but I think of it like movies or TV shows. If you go and watch a movie a year after it came out, nobody is gonna be talking about it anymore. And for some people, that social buzz around a new piece of media is half the fun. Playing a game and talking about it with your friends, the sense of discovery finding things out before you can just look it up on some wiki site, etc.
'How is an order of magnitude substantially different?' is not a question I know how to answer without vulgarity.
I dont get your point about "Just don't buy it" not working.
If consumers didnt think it was a fair price, then they wouldn't buy it. People can live without a videogame, it's not like this is a big pharma company raising prices on a life-saving drug.
Profit means ethical, says newborn babe, innocent and fresh.
the business model of...charging too much money? No, I dont have any issue with this. I have a lot of issues with Blizzard, but this ain't on the list. It sounds like a smart way to alleviate expansion launch server burden, giving both a much better experience for some, and an improved launch for the rest.
... it's a subscription service! They already get a shitload of money, every single month. Don't bemoan their server costs. That's what you're already paying for!
I didnt say server costs, I said server burden. Long queue times on launch day, server crashes, very unevenly distributed server load when everyone is in the same area at the start. I remember FF14's latest expansion was so bad, they completely halted sales of it. Forget too expensive, there was no price, you could not buy it if you were late.
You dont have to pay $90, because you dont have to buy this early access. you dont have to buy the regular access. You are not entitled to this game as a human right, the developers didnt have to make this game, and they dont have to let you play it for whatever price you want. They get to decide the price.
Try this on for size. Split them up, make them worker owned, or strip their IP and open source it. Send a message that anti consumer behavior is dangerous - that your investments could go to zero.
Blizzard and Activision stood up there at the ftc and promised their merger would lead to better products at better prices for customers. Their customers overwhelmingly disagree. Microsoft and Activision/Blizzard said the same. It's all worse and more expensive.
Companies exist for people, not the other way around. They don't have rights, they don't have feelings, and if we do nothing everything we love will turn to shit.
We're in the endgame. Companies are cannibalizing themselves and each other to desperately extend their profit growth for one more quarter. Not to mention, they do that by squeezing their customers just a little harder from all sides
We need rules and boundaries to the game, or this becomes the only workable playstyle for the board of every publicly traded corporation. We're going to crash - we've colonized the whole world (or at least every place with resources highly profitable to extract). The rate of growth can't increase - new markets and technologies will open up areas for growth now and then, but certainly not quarterly. Cannibalizing existing industries is going pretty damn fast, and either we stop it now or we stop it once everything is terrible and our technology sucks.
Either way, we're going to have to tackle climate change and inequality...
You seem to be ranting about something else entirely, we're talking about an announced price for a game
Could you provide me an example of when voting with your wallet worked?
Sure. See, im not gonna buy this game, and Im gonna still have my $90 dollars.
Someone else who does want that early access for $90 will get what they want.
That's not even you voting with your wallet. That's just you not buying a thing because it's too expensive. That's an example of price elasticity
Voting with your wallet is this flawed concept that consumers can control companies through individuals boycotting their products.
For example, I uninstalled hearthstone and quit Blizzard along with many others back when they let China censor a US esports player who commented on Hong Kong protests. But now I wouldn't buy anyways, because their games suck and their payment schemes are obscene
All they know is they lost n customers in that time period, and failed to recover m
yeah, that's what Im doing. I am not hurt in anyway by not buying this thing, no one is making me buy it. That is an option for literally everyone, no one has to buy it. Im not a protesting activist trying to change Blizzard, Im simply not affected by this. The only people that are, are people that want to pay $90 for early access. If they dont want to, nobody is making them.
Yeah, that's fine. I'm also not interested, because i don't play wow anymore
But the phrase "voting with your wallet" is a term loaded with a narrative to justify everything under capitalism, from anti-consumer behaviors to blaming working people for climate change. Neoconservatives and Libertarians use the idea for how deregulation and privitization is the solution to everything
You don't seem to believe in that nonsense, so I'd encourage you to not use the phrase
Wha youre the one that brought it up
Huh, yeah fair enough, your post just had that energy.
I mean, obviously you don't have to buy a game, but saying just "you don't have to buy the product from the company being anti-consumer" sounds a lot like a defense of them, you know?
Could you explain to me how changing more for less is a good thing here?
What would this sort of legislation look like to you?